26

Alis Volat

The next weekend we had an away game at Ventnor Prep, which was just over a hundred miles to the north, in a suburb even more affluent than our own, and was indisputably a first-rate school: unlike Carson, Ventnor was known all over the Southwest. It was the only school for three states around with a crew team. They also had a fencing squad and a rugby team. We thought of Ventnor as a school for intolerable snobs. It owned a famous collection of antique porcelain and glassware which was supposed to exert a refining influence on the students there.

The bus ride took two and a half hours, and when we arrived we were soon given refreshment - presumably we needed Cokes and watercress sandwiches to toughen us up for the game. Members of the Ventnor Mothers' Committee served the waferlike sandwiches in a reception room that appeared to have been modeled on Laker Broome's office. This was a 'pregame mixer,' to be followed by a 'postgame tea,' but there was no mixing. The Ventnor boys clustered on one side of the reception room, we on the other.

Skeleton Ridpath spoke to no one on the way down and in the reception room drank five or six glasses of Coke and prowled around looking at the ornaments on the shelves. These were a display of some of the famous antiques, but Skeleton remained unrefined. He grinned whenever he looked at Del. He looked ghastly, ready for a hospital bed.

Del's hand was still bandaged, and the white gauze flashed like a lamp against his olive skin. He wore a tailored blue blazer, a white shirt, a blue-and-red-striped tie. In this sober outfit he somehow appeared prematurely sophisticated. The dazzling whiteness of new gauze against his skin was dashing as a medal - romantic as an eyepatch. He suddenly appeared to already - novelizing me in the role of one destined to be famous.

Mr. Ridpath coughed into his hand, said, 'Well, boys,' and began to herd us toward the locker room.

Once again, both games ended in disaster. The JV's lost by three touchdowns; the varsity made a touchdown in the first quarter, but the Ventnor quarterback snapped off two passes which brought them ahead, and in the second half a fullback named Creech recovered a fumble and ran thirty yards. After that our defense fell to bits. Ventnor simply marched down the field every time they had the ball. 'This place is so rich they buy athletes,' Chip Hogan told me as we filed out of the stands to walk across several hundred yards of manicured field to return to the reception room and the tea. 'Did you see those two huge guys in the line… and that enormous fullback? I know those guys from the city. They get scholarships and living allowances, and uniform allowances. They even get a training table at meals. Nobody stuffs them full of veal birds.' He gritted his teeth. 'See you at the shitty tea,' he said, and began to run because he could not bear to move more slowly.

At the bottom of the stands, I could go either the way Chip was running, directly across the football field and over a hill to the main building, or along a path which followed the landscaped contours of the grounds and trailed up and down the little rises past the artificial lake. About half my class was visible on this path, too embarrassed by our failure to want to appear at the tea before they had to. I turned away from the school buildings and went down the path toward my friends.

'Jesus, I don't want any of their tea,' Bobby Hollingsworth said after I had caught up with them.

'We don't have any choice, really,' said Morris. 'But to tell you the truth, I'd rather lie down here and go to sleep.'

'Maybe we'll have some fun on the bus going home,' Tom suggested.

'With Ridpath on the bus? Get serious.' Bobby jammed his hands in his pockets and ostentatiously surveyed the grounds. 'Can you believe this place? Have you ever seen anything more nouveau riche? It makes me sick.'

'I think it's kind of pretty,' Del said.

'Well, shit, Florence, why don't you buy it?' Bobby flamed out. 'Give it to somebody for Christmas.'

'Don't jump down his throat,' Tom said. 'You're just mad because we lost again.'

'I guess,' Bobby said. Of course he would not apologize. 'I suppose you like losing. Lose a game, horse around on the bus. Right? Get your jollies. Why not get Florence to buy the bus, then we could kick Ridpath off. Jesus.'

Del had begun to look extremely uncomfortable, and said something about getting cold. He obviously intended that all of us start walking again and join the team in the reception room.

From where we stood, backed by the big trees shielding the lake, we could see across all of the school's grounds to the gymnasium and the other buildings. Most of the varsity players had showered and changed and were walking in small slow-moving groups toward the administration building. It was too dark and they were too far away for us to really see their faces, but we could identify them by their various gaits and postures. Miles Teagarden and Terry Peters slouched along between the two buildings. Teagarden, who had fumbled, was bent over so far he appeared to be policing the grass. 'Ugh,' Tom said when Skeleton Ridpath lounged through the door of the gym - his was a figure no one could mistake. Skeleton ambled toward the rear door of the administration building. Defeat held no embarrassment for him.

Then I heard Del, already six or seven feet ahead of us, moan softly: just as if he'd been lightly punched in the gut. The man in the Foreign Intrigue costume was walking, very erect and unselfconsciously, down into one of the sculptured hollows between ourselves and the school. His back toward us, he was moving toward the grandstand and football field. Around him the darkening air was granular, pointillistic. The brim of his hat pulled down, the belt of his coat dangling, the ends swinging.

'Let's move it, Del,' Tom said.

But Del stood frozen in position, and so all of us watched the man receding into the hollow.

'The janitor works late around here,' said Bobby Hollingsworth. 'I hope he breaks his neck.'

Del held his bandaged hand chest-high, as if flashing a signal or warding off a blow.

'I don't see the point of watching the janitor,' Morris Fielding said. 'I'm getting cold too.'

'No, he's a Ventnor parent,' said Bob Sherman. 'Those coats cost about two hundred bucks.'

'See you there,' Morris said, and resolutely turned his back and set off down the path.

'Two hundred bucks for a coat,' Sherman mused.

By now all of us were watching the retreating figure as if mesmerized. The ends of his wide belt swung, the tails of the coat billowed. The dark air glimmered around him and seemed to melt into his clothing. For the second time that day, I fantasized that I was seeing not an ordinary mortal but a figure from the world of Romance.

He disappeared around the side of the grandstand.

'Oh, let's move,' Tom said. 'Maybe we can catch up with Morris.'

More than a hundred yards away, Skeleton Ridpath let out a wild shriek - a sound not of terror but of some terrible consummation. I looked over at him and saw his gaunt arms flung up above his head, his body twitching in a grotesque jig. He was positively dancing. Then I faintly heard the beating of wings, and glanced back over my shoulder to see a huge bird lifting itself up over the grandstand.

'Yeah, let's go,' Del said in an utterly toneless voice. He yanked at Tom's arm and pulled him down the path in the direction Morris Fielding had gone.

One more event of that day must be recorded. When we joined the tea, the reception room was much more crowded than it had been during the mixer. Ventnor fathers leaned patronizingly toward men in wrinkled gabardine jackets who were surely Ventnor leathers, Ventnor mothers poured lemon tea from the Ventnor silver to other Ventnor mothers. They all looked understandably smug. I was given a cup of the delicate tea by a woman with the elastic, self-aware beauty of a model and went to stand beside Dave Brick. He too had never left the bench. 'I just worked it out,' Brick said, flipping his slide rule into its holster. 'Two-point-three-six of our school would fit into what they've got here. I'm talking about land mass.' 'Terrific,' I said. Skeleton Ridpath drifted past holding a cup of tea in a swimming saucer. He looked crazy enough to levitate. Brick and I backed away, but Skeleton was not paying attention to us. He went a few paces toward one wall, then moonily shifted off at an angle. His mousy hair was still slicked down from the shower. I saw Ventnor parents stare at him, then look quickly away. Skeleton drifted up to the shelves of things where he had browsed before the games. Dave Brick and I, not believing, saw him lift a small glass object from a shelf and slide it in his pocket.